Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, a week after apologizing for insulting a voter, flubbed an election place rule Tuesday as he was trying to promote Election Day.

Fontes, a lawyer and Democrat who took office this year following voting-day problems with his predecessor, recorded a Facebook Live video promoting Election Day within 75 feet of the Surprise City Hall ballot center.

Arizona law restricts photography and video recording within that area at voting locations. Fontes downplayed the apparent violation, and a Republican election law expert said no harm was done.

Voting otherwise appeared to be going smoothly at ballot centers across the Valley for school-district and city bond and override measures, a year after former Recorder Helen Purcell came under fire for long lines at too few polling locations.

And this year's voter participation seemed on track to exceed previous low-profile elections.

The election is a major test for voting changes that Fontes hopes to implement in all elections, including:

Sending ballots by mail to all eligible voters.

Using new types of technology for authenticating voter identification.

"In the execution of my duties as the chief elections official, I wanted to help promote the election, which is my job, and help people to understand what's going on, which is also my job. Those prohibitions don't prevent me from doing my job," Fontes told The Arizona Republic. "The law is unclear, and the practice around the state is inconsistent. So we wanted to make sure we promote the election and get people the information they need."

Republican election attorney Kory Langhofer said there's no question the 75-foot rule applies to ballot centers. But while Fontes breached the letter of the law, which is a potential misdemeanor, he did not violate its intent, Langhofer added.

"Clearly the 75-foot rule applies to these polling centers as well, and any judge that looked at the issue would" agree, Langhofer said. "It appears that Adrian made a mistake and was filming within the 75 foot-limit. But honestly, there's no harm done."

The filming restriction protects voters from intimidation and ensures the secrecy of their ballots, he said. Violators are typically asked to leave and are rarely prosecuted, Langhofer said.

"A short recording without showing anyone's ballot and not getting in anyone's face, even if (Fontes) weren't an elections officer, he wouldn’t get in trouble," he said. What Fontes did is "not quite right, but it’s also not a big deal."

Surprise City Clerk Sherry Ann Aguilar, who oversees the city's elections and appeared with Fontes in the video, said she felt comfortable filming in that location.

"We were way out of the area (where voters cast ballots), and no voters were coming in at that time," Aguilar said. "I didn't feel at all that was a hindrance of any kind."

She also praised Fontes for making the effort to promote Election Day.

"We never had that happen before," Aguilar said. "We thought that was really cool."

New efforts by the Recorder's Office to publicize and simplify the election are part of the reason for a potential uptick in 2017 turnout, spokeswoman Karen Loschiavo said.

"It's a combination of mailing every voter a ballot and ramping up our outreach online and in person," she said.

About 22 percent of eligible voters, or more than 230,000 people, had turned in ballots before Election Day, according to Loschiavo. That rate is expected to climb as Election Day ballots are counted.

In 2015, total turnout reached less than 23 percent, Loschiavo said, while the 2013 elections hit 24 percent.

Not all Maricopa County voters were eligible to vote Tuesday. Only those in Surprise, Gila Bend and 25 school, sanitary and fire districts received ballots.

Setting up an outdoor ballot drop-off box in downtown Phoenix, similar to a USPS mail box. The Recorder's Office is considering deploying the boxes throughout the county, as cities like Denver have done.

The Arizona Republic visited ballot centers in Surprise, Tempe and in central, west and south Phoenix, where voters reported no lines.

Fontes won office in part by blaming the previous longtime Recorder for causing long lines at polling places in 2016.

"This is about as painless as it gets," said Robin Suber, a Tempe voter. "They make it very easy to walk in, drop it, get your sticker and go."

Critics of this year's election plan worried that Fontes was not providing enough ballot centers to make voting easy for people without transportation and that he had not publicized the locations enough. The ballot insert, for instance, told voters to go to the Recorder's website to find locations instead of printing the addresses.

Suber said she easily found a nearby ballot center on the website. But Victor Moreno, a Phoenix voter, said he wasn't sure where to vote.

"I didn't see anything on the ballot," Moreno said.

So he drove around his south Phoenix neighborhood for a few minutes until he saw a "Vote Here" sign.

Did the confusion delay Moreno's vote?

"A little bit, but not too bad," he said.

At a central Phoenix ballot center, several poll workers raved about the new technologies Fontes had introduced to check voter identification and to print replacement ballots.

Previously, poll workers checked voters in by using paper or electronic records and a voter's identification. It was time-consuming and prone to hiccups that sometimes caused wait times.

Now voters who need to replace their ballots can walk up to one of the many computer monitors, swipe their IDs and have a ballot printed for them, which blocks the previous mail-in ballot from being counted.

"The whole system is much, much better," poll worker Roger Fuelling, 66, told the Republic after Recorder's Office employees asked a reporter to talk to volunteers inside a ballot center while it was empty of voters.

"You see all the monitors we have. Before, we just had the one or the two (poll books, and if one broke) we were in trouble. The lines would get long," poll worker Pearl Vice, 83, said. "Here they can all spread out," moving voters through more quickly.